Articles Posted in Illinois Supreme Court

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The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned the Illinois Appellate Court decision regarding the cap on self-insured rental car companies. The Supreme Court reversed a $600,000 judgment against Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s Chicago area’s subsidiary.

The Supreme Court ruled that self-insured rental car companies are liable for a maximum of $100,000 toward all injured parties in a rental car crash.

The decision of the Supreme Court was unanimous. In 2007, a crash in which an Enterprise vehicle was involved, injured at least two individuals. Enterprise paid $75,000 to two of the people involved in the crash. Enterprise argued that it had responsibility  to pay only an additional $25,000 allowed under the cap to the plaintiff.

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The plaintiff Shrempf, Kelly, Napp & Darr, Ltd. was granted summary judgment by the Circuit Court of Madison County for attorney fees and costs they claimed were due pursuant to the Illinois Common Fund Doctrine. The defendants, the Carpenters’ Health and Welfare Trust Fund and the trustees of the Carpenters’ Health and Welfare Trust Fund of St. Louis, appealed.

On May 4, 2006, James Corey Miller was injured when he fell from a ladder. Miller was a participant in the defendants’ Plan. The Plan is a self-funded, multi-employer, Employee Welfare Benefit Plan subject to the provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, 29 U.S.C. §1001, et seq. (ERISA).

The defendants became aware that Miller’s injuries were “sustained due to the act or omission of a third-party when Miller applied for disability benefits because he was no longer able to work.” As part of Miller’s benefit coverage, the Plan was “not obligated to pay any benefits” for an injury or sickness where “a third-party [was] legally liable to make payment or does make payment.”

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The beneficiaries of the Barbara B. Kaull Trust included the biological children of Mark James Kaull’s father, Mark Kaull, who died in 2010. Mary Kaull, acting as trustee of the Barbara B. Kaull Trust, petitioned the court for a ruling on whether Mark, the elder, was also the father of Ryan Donald Schrader. Mark James Kaull might be the brother of Ryan Donald Schrader. To determine whether they were in fact brothers, Mary Kaull asked the court for an order compelling Mark James Kaull to submit to a DNA test. Mark James Kaull refused and was held in contempt of court. Mark James Kaull argued that the Illinois Supreme Court Rule 215 as revised and amended in 1996 is unconstitutional under the U.S. and Illinois Constitutions.

Mark James claimed that the revised Rule 215 violated the prohibition on reasonable searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, plus his right under Article 1, Section 6 of the Illinois Constitution to be free from unreasonable searches, seizures and invasions of privacy.

This case, which was set in Winnebago County, Ill., granted Mary’s request for the DNA testing. Mark appealed from that order which fined him $100 and a dollar a day for declining to obey.

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Cook County has the largest single unified court system in the United States. For the first time, on Jan. 5, 2015, the Circuit Court of Cook County began allowing media cameras in courtrooms. The pilot program has limited to the Leighton Criminal Court building at 26th and California streets in Chicago.

In order to take photographs or film in a Cook County courtroom, the media would have to request authority in advance. The privilege to photograph or videotape court proceedings was initiated by the Illinois Supreme Court’s Extended Media Coverage (EMC) policy and the court’s authorization, which extended media coverage in Illinois courts; it is referred to as M.R 2634.

The pilot program is designed to allow for increased transparency in the Cook County court system.

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It is perhaps a custom that grew out of an era nearly 200 years ago that elected judges would be better suited to carry out the law and protect the integrity of the United States court systems. The reason many states adopted the laws that would allow the election of judges was because so long ago, perhaps in the 1820s, judges were appointed by those in power and influence and thus judges were likewise influenced by those who appointed them. It was thought that the election of judges by the area’s residents would place the best qualified judges on the bench and thus render fair and reasoned opinions absent the influence of the powerful.

A 2007 University of Chicago Law School study found that appointed judges write fewer opinions than elected judges. However, the written opinions by appointed judges tend to be of a higher quality. “A simple explanation for our results,” wrote Stephen Choi, J. Mitu Gulati and Eric Posner, “is that electoral judgeships attract and reward politically savvy people, while appointed judgeships attract more professionally able people.”

The election of judges occurs in 39 U.S. states, including Illinois. Simply put, judges can earn a spot on the bench by winning an election — often, one that is partisan. In fact in some states, the elected judges do not need to be lawyers. This is unheard of throughout most of the civilized world.

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Marilyn Bowers was seriously injured when she was standing at a convenience store and an underinsured motorist drove into the building, seriously injuring her. Bowers and her husband were named insureds under an auto policy that General Casualty Insurance Co. issued for their three vehicles.

Each vehicle was listed on the declaration page as having underinsured motorist coverage with limits of $250,000 in return for separate premiums for $24 for a Chevrolet and $29 each for a 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix and a 2005 Ford F-150 pickup truck.

On the insurance document regarding information on the policy it read: “The coverage listed below applies separately for each vehicle and are provided where a premium is shown. The limit of liability applies separately for each vehicle.”

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The Illinois Appellate Court has reversed a summary judgment order that was entered by a Cook County judge in favor of Safeway Insurance Co. In this case, Jeffrey and Stephanie Hadary were injured in a car crash when Carlos Velez was driving a car he rented from Hertz Corp. The Hadarys claimed that they had suffered injuries that amounted to damages in excess of $40,000, which was the insurance limits of Velez’s insurance carrier, American Access Casualty Co., which had limits of $20,000 per person and $40,000 per accident. The Hadarys reportedly declined to buy the “liability insurance supplement” when they rented the car from Hertz.

Under Illinois’ financial responsibility law, Hertz was bound to provide a bond, an insurance policy or certificate of self-insurance that promised to pay judgments against its customers and anyone driving a Hertz vehicle with a customer’s consent. Section 9-105 of the Illinois Vehicle Code required Hertz to provide this liability coverage with limits of (a) $50,000 for injury to one person or damage to property and (b) $100,000 for injuries to two or more persons.

After American Access paid its $40,000 policy limits to Hadarys, who paid $57 as a premium for underinsured motorist coverage from Safeway Insurance Co. with limits of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence, they alleged that Velez was an underinsured motorist.

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A lawsuit was filed against the Chicago Zoological Society, which operates Brookfield Zoo, on land owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The case was filed by Kristine O’Toole for injuries that she suffered when she fell because of an alleged defect in the pavement.

The defendant, the Chicago Zoological Society, which is a not-for-profit corporation, moved to dismiss the lawsuit under the Illinois Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act, which includes a shortened statute of limitations — that being one-year rather than two years for the usual tort claim. The shortened one-year deadline applies to “any not-for-profit corporation organized for the purpose of conducting public business.”

The Cook County judge granted the motion dismissing O’Toole’s case because she had not filed the lawsuit within the one-year statute of limitations from the date of her injury that the judge decided applied. She took an appeal claiming that the defendant did not qualify as a “local public entity” that would impose the one-year statute.

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The general rule in Illinois, under Section 2-610(b) of the Illinois Civil Procedure, “every allegation, except allegations of damages, not explicitly denied is admitted.” In this case, the defendant chose not to file an answer before the start of the trial. The question for the appellate court was: “Are the allegations in the complaint automatically considered as having been admitted based on Section 2-610(b)?” The answer to the question by the Illinois Appellate Court for the 5th District was, “No.” The appellate court concluded that “Section 2-610 of the Code is inapplicable in a situation where there has been no answer filed.”

In this case, Crawford County Oil and LaCross Inc. sued Floyd Weger, Michael Worthy, Paula Worthy and Charlene Cornwell in a downstate Illinois municipality 243 miles south of Chicago. First, the defendants moved to dismiss. When that motion was denied, the defendants requested summary judgment.

The Illinois Supreme Court Rule 181(a) says that when a defendant responds to a complaint by filing a motion and the request is denied; “an answer or another appropriate motion shall be filed within the time the court directs in the order disposing of the motion.”

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On Sept. 27, 2011, Darius Young, who was 15 at the time, participated in a dice game on a Chicago street with several individuals. One of them, Daniel Glen, who was in a wheelchair, won all of Young’s money during the game; however, he began to suspect that another individual, Jonathan Harris, was trying to cheat him.

When Glen rolled the wheelchair into an alley “to relieve himself,” he claimed that Harris approached him holding a 9 mm handgun and demanded money. Glen stated that Harris put the gun to his back and directed Young to search him for the money he lost. Young grabbed the money from Glen’s pocket, and he and Glen “tussled,” according to his trial testimony, knocking Glen out of his wheelchair. Glen testified that Young and Harris fled, but returned a few minutes later.

Young then put Glen back in his wheelchair and threw $45 at him stating, “I just wanted my birthday money back, my $120.” The incident was reported to the Chicago police by Glen, who identified Young by his nickname and Harris from a lineup.

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